481–490 of 541 posts
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Sure, and I leave tips the vast majority of the time too - but I've had situations where I had no cash on me, the card machine didn't accept a tip, so I just left without feeling bad about it, it's not a big deal.
Not to you I guess. The server has only a very fixed opportunity to get tipped in a shift. To miss out on one is actually significant. Not to mention depressing.
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The reaction in the US isn't based upon some cultural obsession with money. Wait staff in the US is paid differently than in other countries. Wait staff in the US is largely paid the minimum hourly rate for tipped employees which is $2.13 an hour. It is expected that the majority of their income will be earned through tips.
There are many states where tipped employees earn the same minimum wage as non-tipped employees. The social expectation remains the same in those places.
Employers are supposed to make up the difference if the total with tips falls below minimum wage, but I don't think enforcement on that is very strict.
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This is much more common in London than in the rest of the country. Thankfully.
Agreed, very much a London thing. Given it's optional at least you can tell them (or a manager) in the UK to take off if service is crap. In Asia, in places where the service charge is added then the service charge is rarely if ever removed, you can be screaming blue at them due to a chain inexcusable lazy fuck ups and they still wont budge on the service charge - loss of face, lack staff empowerment, 'till say no' e…
America is so stuck in legacy tech. Nobody checks signatures. Strong Factor Authentication requires min 2 of 3. India is leapfrogging to biometrics using Aadhar. Europe is current with chip and pin. America is in quill pen stage
> America is so stuck in legacy tech. Nobody checks signatures. The USPS sadly still forces credit card users to have signatures on the back. They don't check signatures against the PIN pad / signed receipts, but the clerk will either yell at you or refuse the transaction if you have "Ask For Drivers License" on the back of the card. This has happened to me on more than one occasion.
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It must be considered in relation to the size of the transaction; I have given gifts of bottles of wine or Scotch (and in one case, an Echo) to professional service providers who have done a notably good job. I don’t tip a lawyer $2 on a $2000 matter, but a $75 bottle of Scotch is proportionally similar (in fact, a bit smaller) and not at all inappropriate.
So why not tip your waitstaff with a bottle of beer? That sounds appropriate right?
Also, from briefly working in a bar, I found that flashing cash around in the expectation of better service is a good way to get ignored -- developing an actual rapport with the staff, or just being friendly, works far better/is more valued.
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They can be pretty handy. I don't have a physical checkbook and that causes problems for me once or twice a year. Typically when I am buying motorcycles. Those transactions tend to take place on weekends when my bank is closed and for amounts larger than my ATM cash withdrawal limit. They also tend to occur with parties that do not accept electronic payment methods.
I think the "parties not accepting electronic methods" bit is more surprising to people in places with more modern banking systems... In Australia you can hardly buy anything anymore with ordinary cheques (you can still use a bank cheque for a car from a dealer or deposit on a house something, but that's the kind that you go to the bank, pay a fee and they print it out). Hardly any private seller for a car or anythin…
This is how it has always been (tm) here. It's interesting to hear about the glorious future that other countries have. How do you identify the account you are transferring to? I was technically interacting with a business, do they just give me a phone number/email and I use that?
I think my bank is working on a way to do instant transfers but I'm not sure how any of that works.
Actually, doing away with the signature seems a bit odd, given all the machine learning flying around. An electronic signature that records the speed strokes in the signature are made, as well as the final result, is probably a really good way of identifying the purchaser. Of course then a lot of the smaller merchants would have to upgrade their 90's era dial-up credit card processing.
Also, since developing a disability in my hands, that _can't_ be the case -- there _will_ be variations in stroke speed due to level of pain/stiffness at the time.
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You are one of those people that makes some OCR software writer's job a nightmare.
I was taught that long before anyone even thought of OCR :-)